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嗚嗚追鳩，
越河交收。
窈窕淑女，
梟客強求。

比蘇文更高章

今日多份報章都報道了「香港蘇文大學」的新聞。這間於淘寶網賣假證書的網上機構，任何香港人都可一眼看出，是中國人用來騙中國人的冒牌大學，實際與香港毫不相干。始終，無論其網站設計得幾精美，拿海港城和 IFC 的照片來改圖，貼上校徽就當是校舍，甚至挪用中大校長沈祖堯的宣傳照片，如此造假，是絕對騙不倒香港人的。

相比之下，清華大學的張堯學教授，就高章得多了。

這單上月發生的新聞，本地報章沒有報道，反而是一些 hackers 才有所注意。

話說這位任教於中國清華大學（不是假大學喔）的張堯學教授（真為其人呀），上月贏了由中國（是神聖不可分割，「只有一個中國，就是中華人民共和國」的那個中國）國務院頒發的「國家科學技術進步獎」一等獎。除了一般只頒給具有重大戰略價值的科學貢獻（例如原子彈或者「長征」火箭），而又不是每年都頒發的「特等獎」之外，一等獎可說是中國科學界的殊榮。

到底這位張教授發明了甚麼，令他得獎？

根據一些討論區的報道，他似乎只不過是將一些開放源碼的技術（例如 VNC），改頭換面並湊合成一個 remote desktop client 而已。

有些中國網民本來不相信，直至有眼尖的人，從張教授示範其軟件的短片中出現的軟件訊息，追溯出他挪用了那一項開放源碼項目，甚至找出該項目原本於 Google Play 上的產品，才說服了他人。

我不是他那一行的人，所以不敢胡說，可是中國計算機學會卻因此事發出聲明，建議政府日後退出國家科技獎勵評審。由此，一葉知秋。

不過呢，這是既和諧而又強大的中國哪。該項聲明發出之後不久，就因為你也明白的理由，被消失了。好在某個已經在中國執笠的搜尋網站，仍有該聲明的存案。

與其造假，不如用別人的真材實料，當成「自主創新」的發明。如此刀仔鋸大樹，才算高章。

The tetrahedron puzzle

大家都知道甚麼叫正四面體吧？

將一個正四面體切成兩半，交由別人重新拼合成正四面體，有幾難？

研究人工神經網絡的著名學者 Prof. Geoffrey Hinton 說，原來這是很難的，許多麻省理工的教授都搞唔掂！以下是其演講 "What's wrong with convolutional nets?"（連結）的一部份 transcript（從 13:50 開始），相當惹笑。

Here's something you wouldn't believe. I take a simple object, like a tetrahedron. A tetrahedron is a pyramid with a triangular base. And I slice it with a plane. That's a flat thing ... I slice it with a plane. Uhm, so I get two pieces. And then I take an intelligent person, and I give him the two pieces, and I say "OK, make a tetrahedron." And I make sure he knows what a tetrahedron is. And he can't do it. Now I clearly ... now you don't believe that, presumably. It's just two pieces. Surely you can put it together to make a tetrahedron.

I present the experiment today to MIT professors. I got one sample thirty years ago, that's a professor called Carl Hewitt. He is very smart. I gave him the two pieces and ... he looked at them for a long time ... he didn't really play with them but looked at them for a long time, and determined whether he could write down a proof whether it's impossible. [laughter] So, his time to solve the puzzle is infinite. [laughter] OK?

Today I've been doing the experiment to MIT professors, and the number of minutes they take to solve the problem is about the number of years they've been in MIT. [laughter] Roughly speaking, it's definitely very ... the length of time is very positively correlated to how long they have been in MIT. [laughter]

So now I'm going to show you this puzzle, because it's extraodinary. It can't be so hard. It's completely trivial, and there's an obvious way to solve it that people don't figure out. They figure out in a few minutes, but, OK, here's the two pieces ...

（之後 Prof. Hinton 用了幾分鐘示範一些人解這個謎題時是多麼困難）

Why is this puzzle almost impossible? Why is it so hard? 'Cos it's a two-piece jigsaw puzzle. [laughter]

And the MIT professors, and ... oh, incidentally, I tried this on a Google vice president, just to reassure the MIT professors. I gave these two pieces to the Google vice president and said, "This is really a hard task. Can you make a tetrahedron?"

欲知 Google 的 VP 同 MIT professors 相比，結果如何，請看演講片段。